


migration

by chuchisushi



Series: linger [1]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Historical, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Getting Together, Human!zenyatta, M/M, Road Trips, Unreliable Narrator, and fall in love despite themselves, two idiots with Issues start traveling together, were-ish mccree
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-22
Updated: 2016-12-22
Packaged: 2018-09-11 05:10:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8954908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chuchisushi/pseuds/chuchisushi
Summary: linger verb |  lin·ger | \ˈliŋ-gər\2:a: to remain alive although gradually dyingb:  to remain existent although often waning in strength, importance, or influence





	

**Author's Note:**

> written as part of a secret santa for keedot!! I hope you enjoy!!!
> 
> thanks go to my brother, for betaing, and to sparta, who very kindly provided me some preferences to play with
> 
> as a note, genji is deadish over the course of the fic, but he gets... better. The time period and details are both anachronistic and fuzzy; inspiration for the AU was taken from ghibli's princess mononoke, ayakashi: tales of samurai horror's mononoke, and studio laika's kubo and the two strings.

Jesse thinks _haunted_ is a good word for it.

He’s not much of one to talk, given both his kill count and the bounty hung over his head (not to speak of what he’d left behind over the Pacific), but there’s no better word for the weight that lingers on Hanzo’s shoulders.

Hanzo. Just Hanzo. It’s an oddity for this part of the world, to take no family name; even stranger still are the remnants of habits of a finer life that somehow yet survived. Hanzo carries the loveliest bow that Jesse’s ever seen (and he’s had occasion to take a gander at a few) paired with a short sword at the small of his back, and neither weapon are of common stock, certainly are too fine for a wandering blade-for-hire to own. Jesse would think that they’re booty, war prizes taken from the dead, if Hanzo hadn’t wielded both with the unconscious ease of deep familiarity. Hanzo uses the common form of this land’s tongue until he gets distracted, and then he barks at Jesse to be _quiet_ with all the stilted formality of a noble lordling commanding his men. Jesse doesn’t mind it.

They meet like this: Hanzo rolls into the tiny village Jesse’s staying in the night after negotiations have concluded; Jesse has been hired to clear out the bandit problem that’s cropped up nearby. The townsfolk nearly renege on the deal altogether when they see Hanzo, despite what they’d already promised Jesse, because Jesse is a foreigner, is a stranger in their land, and Hanzo, for all his little contradictions and the prideful line of his spine, is not. (And Jesse is so very much a stranger, with his red-brown hair and chisel-tip nose, with his height and the breadth of his shoulders, with the dun of his skin tanned even darker from the summer sun.)

Hanzo declines the offer of work, but only after he hears that Jesse had already agreed to the terms. Jesse can still feel his hesitation. There’s a hunger in the man that cuts Jesse to the quick, bubbles up underneath his ribs like starvation, like a pack squabble over a rotten carcass, and it’s enough to make Jesse say, “We’ll split the take.”

For a moment Jesse thinks Hanzo won’t accept the offer, a flare of something like spiteful pride flickering across haughty features here and then gone again – but then the man’s shoulders slump minutely into something like resignation and he is only a man once more, road-weary and coated in the grit of his journey up to the elbow. Hanzo replies, “Very well,” and that's that.

In the end, it’s good that they’d made the pact, because there are more bandits than had been estimated; it is a gang of men that look to be starting something of a venture in the area by robbing folks that travel through, demanding protection money from the nearby villages at the same time. The fight nets Jesse another scar and a few new curse words, surprisingly courtesy of Hanzo, but they pull through. Could have been worse. Could have been a lot worse.

He says as much to Hanzo the evening after they get paid, and it’s enough to make the other man pause, muscles tight. “And?” Hanzo asks.

Jesse scratches first at his cheek, scraping through stubble, and then tugs on one of the loops of the bandage covering the scrape above his left elbow. “Well – ” he drawls “ – seems like we work well enuff t’gether t’make it worth our while if we keep it up at th’next town. Let us take bigger jobs, have bigger payouts.”

“For more danger, in exchange,” Hanzo returns flatly. But it’s not a no, so Jesse presses.

“Danger that y’d run inta anyway. Two won’t make it that much harder t’book it if we need it, but two’s enuff t’get at least double th’coin without too much more trouble.”

“Your logic is not very sound,” Hanzo replies, then pauses with his gaze fixed in the middle distance, head tipped ever so slightly, as though he were listening to something other than the screams of cicadas. Jesse holds his breath, anticipation curling hot and bright in his chest.

“But… your skill cannot be denied.” Hanzo hesitates once more before sighing. “Very well,” he says. “Then let us become… traveling companions,” and Jesse barely holds back his urge to yelp in glee.

 

They travel like this: trading off watches as they take the wild ways less traveled. Hanzo pays respects at any shrines they pass, and Jesse carefully shreds pipeweed and feeds the spirits of this sea-birthed land smoke, asking for safe passage. He feels Hanzo’s eyes on him, sometimes, a pointed stare that crackles with potential, like the massive column of a storm brewing on the horizon, but Jesse never falters under it, never reacts. Hanzo is a careful, wary, prideful thing, all bristling edges like bared teeth, but Jesse learned patience at the foot of a deep, sonorous voice with a penchant for drama and pacing, and so he waits. Shakes off the ghosts, haunted. 

He's not the only one; Hanzo wakes too-early for watch sometimes, spends as much money on wine as he does food. Once, Jesse comes back from hunting (sporting brambles in his hair and the taste of rabbit blood in his teeth) to their campsite in a disarray, contents strewn about as though from a high wind and puddles of fresh water collecting in the dirt. It hadn't rained. Jesse breathes in the snap of thready lightning. Hanzo stands, lost and listless, in the center of the disarray, silent and still until Jesse calls his name.

 

They fight others like this: Hanzo on higher ground when they can manage, scaling rocks, walls, and trees with equal dexterity. Jesse has a rifle, a knife long enough to rightly be a shortsword, a sling, and himself. He's big; he grabs their attention, overblown and larger than life, and most of the time it's enough space to let Hanzo pick off those in the back gawping too incautiously, which is enough distraction in and of itself to give Jesse enough room to lay into a few in the front.

It gets him into trouble, one time – too incautious, too hungry, too eager; it makes him overextend and some lucky bastard gets him with a blade buried between his shoulderblades.

Jesse _bellows_ in pain, the sound bursting out of his lungs too-loud too-harsh for a mere man, and it bleeds into a gurgling snarl much the same as Jesse twists enough to yank the knife out. The men nearest him are already backing away, fear heavy on their skin, their faces, cries of ‘oni’ and ‘yokai’ spreading from mouth to mouth, and Jesse lunges forward, teeth bared, the blade that had been buried in him steaming from his blood, his wounds already closing.

Not all the men are killed. Most of them flee. Jesse doesn't take fangs to any of them, though it’s a near thing. When Hanzo comes down from his perch, it's with visible caution, edging towards him almost sideways – but he meets Jesse’s eyes fully even as he raises both eyebrows at him.

“Yeah, I'm fine,” Jesse replies, sheepish to the nonvocal query, and Hanzo nods once and says:

“Then let us go. Before they regroup and return.”

Jesse waits, because he learned patience at the foot of a voice like loose stones and friendly thunder (he shakes off the ghosts, haunted), and that evening Hanzo counts the arrows in his quiver, turns to look him in the eye, and says, “I need a goose.”

Jesse snorts out a laugh in his surprise, and it's enough to make the corners of Hanzo’s eyes crinkle in mirth, though the rest of his face remains stern; Jesse shakes his head, slaps his hands down onto his thighs, and pushes himself to his feet. The nearest body of water is miles away, and though they'd seen geese flocking in their distinctive vee earlier…

“Now, don't get reliant on this. I ain't gonna play fetch every time,” Jesse tells him, which makes Hanzo’s smile spread to his lips in a sly little crooked quirk of a thing that makes Jesse’s belly swoop.

He slinks out of camp, scuffs his toes in the dirt and tips his head back to scent the air, checking for watching eyes. All he finds is the lingering traces of himself and Hanzo he'd left behind and the smell of the woods around him, lush and night-sweet. It had taken time to acclimate, when he'd first come over the water, to learn: first the language that he'd wrapped his human tongue around and then the one that spoke to him of safety, of danger, of the hunt, these forests and mountains and coasts so different from the sere rock and scrub that he’d first honed his skills on.

But Jesse is a survivor, always a survivor, and he'd adapted. Grown. He’ll never be able to hide that he is a stranger in these lands, but it's easy to make himself look the fool; he dresses like he barely has any money to his name, wears blankets like skirts and ponchos, his belongings tucked all up tight in a bundle that rides across his shoulders. He has scabbards and sheaths of worn, sun-beaten leather strung with the coins they use here in layers, stitched to the hide in shiny strings; he walks barefooted, hair unbound, like a beggar. Most dismiss him, assuming a foreigner who'd journeyed to seek his fortune and encountered poor luck, and Jesse lets them believe that, because it's easy. Others obviously think him some sort of mad, deluded, or decide that what he does is an act intended to take advantage of them; they spit at his feet or chase him off. He lets them believe that as well, sticks to the wild ways less traveled, and lets Hanzo run whatever errands they need in the cities they pass.

Jesse shakes his head, lets his skin shiver all in a wave like it wants to, and slipping into another shape is as easy as falling forwards, catching himself on paws instead of palms. It doesn’t hurt. Why would it, when he’d already cursed and sweat and bled for the sake of it, to prove his worth? Jesse shakes all of himself out, muzzle to his black-tipped tail, sneezes as his fur stands on-end, ruffled big, and then sleeks himself back down, pointing his nose towards the water he can feel in his bones in the distance. 

Hunting down a goose is not so hard. Neither is traveling back to their campsite, Jesse’s long lope eating up the miles. He pauses on the perimeter, takes one loop about it, nose working, making sure things are as he’d left them, that Hanzo is still –

“Cease your fidgeting. I know you are out there.”

Jesse sneezes, laughing even though the taste of bird blood in his teeth, chuffs in reply to Hanzo’s words and leads with his muzzle, slipping out of the brush to Hanzo’s left. Hanzo sits where he is on the fallen log he’d taken as his perch and watches Jesse watch him from the corners of his eyes, his spine straight and haughty. Jesse almost laughs again at the sight – so much pride. The little gods of this land demanded respect that both of them gave in exchange for safe passage, but Jesse is no little god nor a native of these lands, and so Jesse leans in when he’s close enough, dropping the dead goose right into Hanzo’s lap and continuing the motion to bury his nose in the cloth and muscle of Hanzo’s belly, nearly shoving him off the log altogether. Hanzo curses at him for it as he hastily regains his balance, and Jesse laughs all yips and huffs and perked ears for it, delighted.

“Noisy,” Hanzo tells him, half-reprimanding. “As noisy as you always are,” and Jesse turns his head in Hanzo’s hands at that to carefully, slowly, close his jaws over the forearm Hanzo has covered to spare it the backlash of his bowstring, sets teeth gentle against the flex of tendon and, underneath, the stiffness of bone. They both still at the pressure, Jesse watching Hanzo with his ears perked and tail waving tentatively, and Hanzo stares back down at him with something nameless lurking in his eyes. When he shifts, Jesse releases him, folding himself down to fit between Hanzo’s knees, and Hanzo reaches out this time to run his fingers through coarse fur, pushing through to the softer layers underneath, nails scratching. It feels _incredible_ , and Jesse lets his eyes half-lid, lolls his tongue out, and makes a chuffing, whining yowp of a noise that makes Hanzo’s eyes crinkle up even as he makes a disgusted sound, flicking tufts of shed fur away from himself.

“You are a travesty of a marvel,” Hanzo tells him, deadly serious, but scratches behind Jesse’s ears long enough for the other to melt into a sprawl of too-long limbs and cloth. “No wonder all your blankets smell of dog.”

Hanzo sits back eventually and turns his attention instead to the goose Jesse had fetched for him, spreading out its wings and examining its flight feathers. Jesse rolls onto his back, belly up but head tipped aside as he watches, then sheds this shape as easy as pushing himself up, shifting to lean against the part of the log framed by Hanzo’s knees. The bark digs into his skin, but the soft crackling warmth of the fire is more than enough comfort to offset it, and Hanzo doesn’t stop what he’s doing, not really, just reaches down with one hand to rest it, briefly, against the crown of Jesse’s head.

“You could be worshiped as a god in these lands,” Hanzo tells him, voice low. “A beast as large as a man that wavers between such forms? It’s the stuff of legends, here.”

Jesse lets his eyes half-lid, works at the knot of his pack, and picks it apart enough to ease it off his shoulders. “And what would I do with worship?” he asks, tone teasing. “Prayers don’t fill my belly.” He stands, the heavy iron of their campfire pot in one hand, canteens and a sack of individually wrapped bundles in the other. He wanders to the fire, sets up the tripod, hangs and fills the pot with water. Peels apart this or that bundle, sniffing at some, to add dried vegetables and herbs to the water. “I ain’t one of yer little gods. Don’t mistake me. I’m a man, same as any other.”

Behind him, there is silence, unbroken save for the rip of down being plucked from the goose and the hiss of a knife deftly slipping through feathers to slice them free of skin. “You chose a lame one,” Hanzo tells him, and Jesse grunts.

“Easiest to catch,” he replies.

“You are not a wolf. Not a dog.” There’s the wet crunch of bones being broken, a series of round-edged cracks. “Something from whence you came?”

“That’s right. Song-dogs. Tricksters. Leave the offal; I’ll eat it.” He drops into a crouch, holds out his hands to the fire as Hanzo’s knife hesitates. “They’re tenacious. I earned it, out there in the scrub’n th’cliffs. Went looking for something like me and found it, snarled and fought and cried through the change. It was an honor.”

“Yet you did not remain.”

Jesse breathes out long and low, staring into the flames. “No,” he says, eventually. “Too many old ghosts.” There is a pause and then the rustle of cloth and the pad of steps. Hanzo appears at his side as though conjured, the plucked and stripped goose thrust out in Jesse’s direction; Jesse reaches up to take it instinctively. Hanzo’s jaw works once, rolling, then stilling as he looks down at Jesse. Meets his eyes.

“I, too, had power. Once. It forsook me for what I did.” He stops, lips thinning; and, understanding, Jesse leans forward just enough to press his tongue against Hanzo’s fingers. He cleans the blood from them without ever breaking their stare, and Jesse watches the black in Hanzo’s eyes blossom wide, his mouth slipping open as Jesse laves fingertips and knuckles, slipping over calluses and cracked skin. No longer the soft hands of a lord’s son, these. But it’s alright. He doesn’t care.

Hanzo sits with him, spine pressed to his, as Jesse strips the flesh from the goose, adds the best of it to the roiling water in the pot for stew and eats the rest himself, licking his chops clean after.

 

They learn each other like this: quiet nights spent next to campfires, sometimes nursing injuries, sometimes not. Sometimes it is the length of Jesse’s back pressed desert-hot against the dew-cool span of Hanzo’s. At others, it is bow-callused fingers digging into tawny fur, Jesse as support for Hanzo’s weight and half-curled about him with what’s left to spare. At others, it is Jesse’s head resting in Hanzo’s lap, the other’s legs folded demurely underneath his own thighs; one of his hands cups the nape of Jesse’s neck, lays sometimes over his eyes. Jesse closes them and talks about nothing, meandering from topic to topic to banish the lingering specter of heavy silence that hangs over Hanzo’s shoulders these nights.

“McCree is an unusual family name,” Hanzo remarks, once. Jesse thinks about a weathered church with a walled courtyard that shimmered with heat haze, and laughs, low.

“It’s what I took from the old Padre that tried his best to raise a passel’a brats with no ma or pa. Bless his soul.”

“You are not devout,” and it’s not a question, not really. Jesse muffles his laugh by rolling, buries his mirth in the cloth covering Hanzo’s thighs.

“No, sir. God’s grace pass me by,” and Hanzo yanks gently at one of his ears when Jesse squirms to get himself comfortable.

Hanzo doesn’t talk about himself, not since that night, but they fight at each others’ sides like they’re listening to the way their muscles sing, locked in complementary tandem, and though Jesse’s the most well-fed he’s been these past few years of wandering, the hunger in his belly _grows_. It is selfishness, some desire that hangs beyond Jesse’s grasp, but he dares not give up those nights pressed together for his greed, clinging to the comfort of company despite the trouble he’s sure it’ll later bring.

 

They meet the monk like this: they travel to a village nestled at the foot of the mountains, led by a rumor of people besieged by a beast that slaughters their livestock and wounds their men, and they arrive instead to a celebration limned in a golden glow. They find, drawn in, that the townsfolk are relieved, that the monster has been slain – and that the one that had vanquished it is a young man with a shaven head and a beatific smile and armor enclosing his form underneath well-worn robes. He declines the offer of lavish food and drink, asks instead merely for a place to spend the night, and Hanzo watches the monk with all his focus, attention captured by what, Jesse does not know. They go that evening to where the beast had been killed, and find the twisted remains of a true _horror_ , something with scales and claws and jointed legs; the shape of its body is thankfully obscured by dusty rot and the sudden greenery that has grown through its corpse. Jesse expects the scent of decay and finds instead only the smell of sunshine and stone swept clean.

He sneezes, once, for it, and nearly misses Hanzo state softly, “Mononoke. Laid to rest.” There is a terrible stillness on Hanzo’s face, a well-used mask that Jesse has never seen before that obscures Hanzo’s emotions; Jesse shifts his weight next to him, bares his teeth instinctively, unsettled.

“It is. Was. Malevolent. Did harm,” Hanzo says, and then he falls silent, staring at the overgrown bones. Jesse gives him his peace – but not too much, wary of where Hanzo could be lost to him; he gives him his peace, enough time for the wind to pick up a bite, and then nudges Hanzo with his hip, jostling the other man.

“Hey,” Jesse says, and then he clears his throat, says, “Hey,” again to swallow the whine of concern that’s tickling the base of his tongue. “Let’s get in. It’s gettin’ cold.” He nudges Hanzo again, a little harder this time when he gets no response, and Hanzo makes an irritable noise in return, shoves back at Jesse (who lets himself rock back onto his heels in his relief).

“Cease your pestering,” Hanzo snaps. “Let us go, then, if only to bring me some peace from your nattering.” He turns on heel to stalk away, and Jesse snickers where he stands before lengthening his stride to chase him, soon falling easily into his place at Hanzo’s side.

In the morning, the monk is gone, and Hanzo is _distraught_ , storming through the detritus of the celebration that had carried into the night with his lips twisted into a snarl and a deep furrow plowed between his brows. “Hanzo,” Jesse tries, and nearly barks in alarm when the man whirls on heel, turning on him quick as a snake to spit, “ _What_?!” into his face.

Jesse can’t keep the whine in his chest, chagrined, chastised, and Hanzo’s lips thin at the sound before he looks away, drops back fully onto his feet. “Hanzo,” Jesse tries again, voice small, and Hanzo’s expression spasms, pained, before he directs his gaze to the dirt under their feet instead.

“The monk has power. Real power, true power. I do not know if it is mastery or blessing or that he is even truly a monk – but he laid the spirit that haunted this place to rest kindly despite the harm it caused. And I – ”

Hanzo’s words fail him. He stops, shoulders tight. They stand like that for the long span of several heartbeats, Hanzo resolutely avoiding Jesse’s gaze and Jesse considering Hanzo wordlessly, quiet for once. The tension holds, stretches long, until it breaks when Jesse asks, “D’y’trust me?”

Hanzo looks up sharply at his words – looks straight up at him, into his eyes, and Hanzo answers, “Yes,” instantly, without any hesitation in either his body or voice. Jesse can feel his mouth twist into something soft and bittersweet, his brows furrowing together at the other, so unguarded suddenly in this truth.

He says, “Alright,” and then breaks their stare to consider their surroundings, careful of watching eyes; he breathes in, smells the loam of the forest and clean rock and the cool of the night being chased away by the heat of the day, the clay of the road they stand on. This one is harder, fights him, because it is not a thing to be _owned_ , but Jesse bites back all bared-teeth and puffed-tail because there is a _need_ –

The world _shifts_ , and for a long second Jesse does not stand on a worn-in path an ocean and a country away from the land where he was born; for a moment he stands at a crossroads of two goat paths carved into the face of a cliff colored red-orange-brown, the sky on _fire_ above him, the shiver of the echoing cry of vultures wavering across his skin. There is blood underneath his fingernails and blood caught in his teeth, and he tastes iron like dust with every breath as he _demands_ ; and the land itself bends to his will, ripples and hums and snaps like vertebrae crunching underneath his culling jaw.

A shivering thrill fills him, like hunger but more raw, feral, and when Jesse looks down at Hanzo he finds that the other has bristled, eyes wide and the stray hairs that had fallen from his ponytail drifting suspended with electricity. Jesse croons, huffs, circles Hanzo close where he stands, close enough to brush cloth against skin, skin against cloth, and Hanzo doesn't flinch, does not waver, reaches up instead to cup Jesse’s face between hands that do not tremble, sliding his thumb across the bone underneath his left eye.

“How well d’y’ride?” Jesse grates out, energy thrumming beneath his skin, twitchy, anticipating, and Hanzo looks him up and down, assessing, before replying, firmly, “I will manage.”

Jesse lets his control play out between his fingers, and Hanzo has leapt astride the rise of his shoulders almost before Jesse has settled into his skin, and Jesse can’t help but dance a little, small eager hops and skips interspersed with yips and a short little howl, before he takes off down the road. The way is clear to him, even through the starving red haze that colors his vision; the markers of where his quarry – of where the monk had passed – are clear to him, act as his guide.

Yet it is not straightforward going despite the clarity that he has wrestled into submission. Even in this land of little gods, the sight of a foreign beast the size and breadth of a man would be enough to cause a panic. Hanzo, though he shifts his weight well enough in response to Jesse’s gait, tires eventually, because Jesse is certainly no horse and ill-equipped to handle a rider even with his best intentions. And the monk is – Jesse thinks there _must_ be something _more_ fueling the man’s steps, because the monk covers an incredible amount of ground, as though he never tires, as though his path were as clear as Jesse’s own.

But they find him. They find him, and Jesse paces the perimeter of the camp beyond the glow of the fire, watching, wary, and Hanzo pats the heave of his ribs, strokes through the whiskers on his muzzle, and presses one callused finger to the tip of Jesse’s nose before venturing into the light. The monk looks up at his entrance and smiles, first at Hanzo and then at Jesse where he lingers, still all red-hazed and hungry, behind. 

“Hello, travelers,” the monk says, unafraid. “Be welcome.”

And Hanzo swallows, clears his throat, and says, “Venerable one – I have come to beg a boon. Will you hear my story?” with his spine pridefully, defensively straight.

Hanzo seats himself by the fire, too far away for Jesse to easily hear, but Jesse lingers long enough to watch Hanzo tentatively begin to speak, body bowed slightly towards the whipcord of the other, to slip away.

The shift is not easy, this time. He has taxed himself. He remembers a voice as deep as wells, a humor black as night, learning at the foot of two men and the finest sharpshooter the world had ever known, and clawing back into his skin is _torment_ , the act of pulling away from the siren song of the scarlet hunt agony for the knowledge gained and lost. Jesse does it anyway, because he remembers what their king had become, something like a true monster, caught halfway between with a moon-pale face on silent wings. Bad omens. Bad omens. Jesse _fights it_ and trembles on hands and knees after, gasping for air with the way the shift aches in his bones. He gives himself the count of thirty before pushing himself to his feet to search for firewood.

The night is deep and long by the time Hanzo returns to him; Jesse looks up at the rustle of cloth and meets the other man’s gaze. When their eyes catch, Hanzo’s shoulders drop, all the tension sliding out of his spine and face to be replaced with simple exhaustion; he ages years in a single breath, eyes shadowed. Jesse opens his arms, the corners of the blanket across his shoulders caught in either hand, and, miracle of miracles, Hanzo comes to him, crawls into the embrace and folds himself down small within it.

“I made porridge,” Jesse tells him. Hanzo grunts in reply. The scent of sweet plum wine lingers on his breath, but it is only a taste of a memory. The hollow gourd at Hanzo’s side is light. Cups shared. “The monk drinks?”

“Sacrifices made,” Hanzo replies, quiet, his voice a rasp in the back of his throat. “Libations. And company, to seal the shifting of a burden.” He falls silent for a moment. “What price did you pay for the use of such power today? The ability to hunt your targets to ground, even if they are more than flesh and blood…”

“Dead eye blind. Jes for a few days. Same way anger clouds yer sight, and th’way hunger makes y’desperate n’stupid.” Hanzo shifts where he sits, frowning, straightens enough to cup one hand over Jesse’s eyes. Jesse lets him do so, patient like he'd learned, and when Hanzo removes his hand, he doesn't squint against the light of the fire. Lets Hanzo see how the black in his left doesn’t change, doesn't close against the sting.

Hanzo's face hardens. “You _fool_ – why did you – the need was not – ” He shifts as though he means to pull away, escape from Jesse, and Jesse tightens his hold to keep him close. Hanzo’s voice wavers. “It was not worth the price.”

“It'll pass. We can take it easy for a few days. Lick our wounds  Maybe scout the area, see if anyone nearby’ll take in a pair of wandering blades for the winter in exchange for work.” He rumbles when Hanzo’s face crumples, pulls him even closer, rubs his cheek against the crown of the other’s head when he feels Hanzo’s arms go around him.

“I gave up my family name,” Hanzo confesses into the warm space underneath Jesse’s chin. “I did not deserve the honor of a lineage – of a legacy. And it was better like this, for me to wander nameless in penance for my cowardice. I was not able to spare my brother either the sentence of death or the death of his honor, and he slew us in his thwarted rage for it.

“I am a kinkiller, Jesse. A kinkiller and a coward. I slaughtered my brother, watched him fall underneath the edge of my blade. I ran from what I had done, terrified of his blood on my hands. And in return, he became something terrible, condemned to linger. I – ” He falters, breathes in trembling. “It would have sated him if I had had the bravery, the honor, to give myself to his rage. That is all he seeks now, since his death, all these long years a demon – and all it would take to free him would be my death at his hands.

“But I – I do not, did not want to die. I rejected it. Accepted dishonor instead. And for it my family’s line will die with me. The power once bound in our flesh and blood has already fled me; I am nameless, a kinkiller, dead in all but the body, and _yet_ – ” Jesse squeezes him tighter. “I cannot. I _cannot_. There is so little of me left, and that little is beyond any redemption, yet even now I am _afraid_. The monk has power, true power, and I spun him my tale. Perhaps he will be able to lay the spirit of my brother to rest. Or perhaps I have slain him as well in my cowardice.”

And Hanzo’s voice is so thick with self-loathing by the end of his words that Jesse whines soft all in his sinuses, digs the tips of his fingers in against the muscle of Hanzo’s back. What can he say in the face of such ghosts?

“I'm glad yer alive,” Jesse tells him, honest, bleeding raw with it, croons when Hanzo flinches. “I'm glad yer alive and not some laird’s son. I'm glad y’learned how to hunt n’fight. I'm glad yer _alive_ – I'm glad that y’ _survived_ – long enuff fer me t’know y’. Hanzo – Hanzo, _please_ , sugar, dumplin’ – ” He shifts his head and grip enough to nip at the curve of one of Hanzo’s ears, heartbroken. “It don't matter t’me. Yer talkin’ t’the kid whose kin didn't care enuff t’keep ‘im, who lost the family he found twice over. If yer a coward jes fer wantin’ t’live, then I'm the most gutless, yellabellied sunnuvabitch who ever set foot on God’s green earth. Why d’y’think I'm all th’way out here, n’not in th’Mericas?” Hanzo snuffles wetly into Jesse’s shoulder, hiding his face. “I don’ care. Yer not th’only one with a body count. Ain't th’only one with ghosts. I'm still glad t’have met y’. Still glad t’have worked n’fought n’slept at yer side. Even if yer pricklier’n a pissed-off porcupine some days. Still worth it. More’n worth it.”

“You are a fool,” Hanzo says thickly. “A ridiculous man.” He doesn't resist when Jesse works his hands underneath his thighs to haul him outright into the other man’s lap.

“Yeah,” Jesse agrees. “But y’shouldn’t’a fed me if y’didn want me stickin’ around. Ain't nobody told y’that’s how critters adopt y’?” and Hanzo is a mess when he laughs, cheeks blotchy and his ponytail coming loose, but he _laughs_ , and it's enough to make Jesse want to _sing_.

He kisses Hanzo gentle on the cheek instead. Licks up saltwater with a soft tongue. Hanzo runs a hand through Jesse’s hair, pulling strands of it away from his face. Smiles at him. Jesse’s heart swoops.

 

It goes like this: they find a place to hunker down for winter and spend the time around their work feeding each other small secrets, learning the rest of each they do not know. They spend the new year together, snowed in, happily so. Hanzo tends Jesse through his season two months later, and Jesse bites him hard enough to bleed for it, hard enough to scar the tender, thin skin at his nape. He tries to apologize, after, and Hanzo refuses to accept his words. Tells him it was pain freely, willingly given. Tells him that it’s a promise. That it’s a mark wholeheartedly taken to claim what is left of his life. Jesse cries – cries and _sings_.

It is summer when they hear the first rumors, that Shimada castle had been exorcised, the demon that haunted the ruins banished. Neither of them say anything to the other, mutually turn their steps towards the past in tandem instead, _needing_ to know –

They find a monk along the way, his head shaven, his smile beatific, thinner, with his robes perhaps slightly more tattered since last they met, but in exchange the armor that he had worn walks at his side, wields a blade at his back and one at his hip and speaks with a voice familiar to Hanzo –

(“I forgive you,” Genji tells him. “Brother. I forgive you. Let us walk together, and atone for the harm we have done.”)

(Jesse tells Hanzo gently, that night, that if Hanzo will not go with them, that Jesse _will_ , and that Hanzo had a responsibility to the wild thing he'd tamed to his hand. Hanzo laughs until he cries, and Jesse holds him all through the sleepless night, but when the sun dawns the next morning, their possessions are packed and they meet Tekhartha Zenyatta and Genji in the courtyard.) 

And when the dragons thunder into life, roaring with the voices of a thousand storms, Jesse thinks he is dreaming them into being, twin blue-white specters born of the snow and the bloodloss and the unnatural cold of the yuki-onna that haunted this mountain pass. It is not until they tear through her, giant eyes sparking with lightning that leaps back and forth between their fangs, not until Genji shouts in surprise and recognition, that Jesse realizes they are _real_ , as real as the fur that is deserting him, as real as the hands that catch at his shoulders when he staggers, as real as the fear in Hanzo’s eyes. The man is shouting at him to stay awake, cursing him and calling him all manner of names even as he rips the scarf out of his own hair to cinch tight tight tight above Jesse’s left elbow, even as he screams for Zenyatta’s help, and Jesse _tries_ , he truly tries, but –

When he wakes it is to the low crackle of a fire and unfamiliar wooden walls. He hurts but only vaguely, distantly, more of an idea than true sensation. There is the rhythmic hiss of a whetstone gliding over an edge nearby, mixed with the click of prayer beads. When Jesse blinks, Hanzo is suddenly there, knelt at his side with his feet tucked up neatly underneath himself; Jesse must make some noise at it, because Hanzo’s glower snaps to his face. Jesse dredges up a smile from somewhere for him, and Hanzo’s face goes even tighter in response.

“Do _not_ ,” Hanzo enunciates, “do anything of the like again. Do not _dare_ – ”

“Aw, sugar – ”

“Do not ‘aw, sugar’ me!” Hanzo lurches forward, ungraceful like Jesse has rarely seen, to press one callused hand to Jesse’s collarbone, leaning in with all his weight. “You nearly _died_!” he hisses, overcome, and Jesse isn’t surprised in the slightest when he tugs at Hanzo and the other willingly folds.

Jesse tucks Hanzo in under his arm, all along his side from shoulder to hip, and pulls the blankets back over them both. Hanzo fusses over the lay of them for a few moments more, and Jesse waits, patient, for him to still before lifting up his left hand to inspect. It is metal and cloth now, imperfect, a familiar gauntlet newly missing a thumb whose gaps are filled with blue-white light. Jesse considers it, the geometric lines etched into the flesh of his arm above the elbow, and, beside him, Hanzo considers it as well. Both of the archer’s hands are bare.

“Zenyatta and Genji?” Jesse asks.

“Unhurt. Taxed. They are both resting.”

“And yer – new friends? Old friends?”

“... old,” Hanzo answers, and Jesse turns his head just enough to see that the grey clouds across Hanzo’s left arm and shoulder have been populated with lightning and blue scales, a mighty serpent writhing its way across his skin. If he stares long enough, he could swear he sees it breathe.

“Power came back t’y’. Good,” Jesse says, satisfied. Hanzo snarls and jabs Jesse in the side.

“It is not ‘good’ – I nearly lost you in the doing of it! Such a trade – I will not tolerate it – ” he starts, and then makes a startled noise when Jesse rolls over and half on top of him in the process. 

“Shhh – yer too fulla spunk right now fer my tired ass. Later. We c’n squabble later, after a nap. Genji? Y’got watch?”

“Yes, Jesse,” Genji answers from across the room, voice filled with mirth at his brother’s expense.

“Good. Thanks.” Then, to Hanzo, “We’re havin’a rest right now, dumplin’. Y’can bite all y’want at me after, I promise. Sleep now.” Jesse shifts to kiss him, and Hanzo arches up into it fullbodied despite the chasteness of the contact. And after, wonder of wonders, Hanzo settles, and Jesse noses into the hollow of his throat to find the comfort of his scent.

He falls back asleep with his belly full of warmth, his heart full of song, and haunting hunger a distant memory.


End file.
